Mary Lee Settle

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Mary Lee Settle (July 29, 1918 - September 27, 2005) was an American writer and winner of the National Book Award for her 1978 novel Blood Tie. She was also one of the founders of the annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Settle was born in Charleston, West Virginia. She attended Sweet Briar College for two years, then moved to New York City in pursuit of a career as an actress and model, and even tested for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. Settle lived for many years in Canada, in England, and in Turkey.

Settle is most famous for a series of novels called the "Beulah Quintet", which cover the history of West Virginia, and thus by implication, the United States. She also wrote several works of non-fiction.

She died of lung cancer in Ivy, Virginia, near Charlottesville.